PhillyPharma

Healthcare and pharmaceutical job cuts continue, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas

Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies continued to shed jobs in March and the rest of the first quarter of 2013, according to the latest employment report released Thursday morning by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Healthcare and pharmaceutical job cuts continue, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas

POSTED: Thursday, April 4, 2013, 8:13 AM

David Sell

Challenger defines and tracks 28 different sectors, with "healthcare/products" and "pharmaceuticals" being separate sectors. Government jobs are also a separate category, and some of those involve healthcare.

The healthcare sector had the third highest number of job cuts through the first three months of 2013, with 11,713 people leaving jobs versus 6,880 in the same period of 2012. The only two sectors with higher job losses were the financial and retail sectors. In shorter term, 6,349 people lost healthcare jobs in March versus 2,754 in February. The report said companies in March announced plans to hire 1588 people.

The numbers in the pharmaceutical sector were slightly more mixed, according to Challenger.

The quarterly total in pharmaceuticals was better than 2012, with only 3,185 losing jobs in 2013 compared to 4,459 a year earlier. (Obviously, that's of little solace to those now fretting about how to make a mortgage payment.)

But the overall trend continues in pharmaceuticals, according to the Challenger report.

In February 2013, 510 pharma jobs were cut, but that number jumped to 2,151 cuts in March. In March of 2012, only 123 pharma jobs were cut. The report said companies in March announced plans to hire 325 people.

AstraZeneca announced in March that it would cut or move 1200 jobs from its facility in Wilmington.

A link to the full press release from Challenger is here.

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Comments (8)

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:07 AM, 04/04/2013

Does this have anything to do with Obama's "war on" domestic health care and financial sectors? Hope & change...4 more years!

— kelprod2-freemarket

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:57 AM, 04/04/2013

I thought Obamacare was supposed to increase jobs and improve the medical community???

Oh oh....someone's got some 'splainin' to do...

— Professor1982

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:10 AM, 04/04/2013

Obama and his fans were warned but he moved forward on all these new taxes and regulations on the industry anyway.

— Phillies2008WSChamps

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:18 AM, 04/04/2013

The Astra Zeneca number doesn't truly reflect the additional 1300 jobs on the cutting block,thus bringing the total to 2500 fewer employees, primarily in their marketing division.

With the introduction of the not-so-"affordable" health care act, and its inter-state exchanges, more heads will roll.

A media which helped perpetuate a strategy to demonize pharma almost a decade ago is purposely not asking the proper questions. Instead of assertively questioning the administration and challenging it to explain how it plans to recover the loss of these middle class level jobs, it elects to promote small increases in minimum wage and part time positions that make up the majority of these jobs. What it should be doing is challenging the Obama administration's tiring mantra of how it's republicans who are destroying that very same middle class we've seen decline over the past 5 years.

— Right To Be Heard

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:31 AM, 04/04/2013

I suspect that the entire world wide pharmaceutical industry is contracting. Pharmaceutical companies are reducing the number of therapeutic areas they are pursuing; this is based on economics whereby the cost to bring a drug to market has increased and companies can only risk spending this cost on drugs they are virtually certain will be winners. As a result, there will be more and more layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry as companies increasingly specialize in particular therapeutic areas.

— BobSG

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:54 AM, 04/04/2013

The whole pharmaceutical sector is contracting, driven by a limit to current science, and the slow growth of being able to exploit newer technologies. Secondly, the huge number of patent expirations have lead to an overall contraction in the value of the sector. Thirdly, the impeding bio similars will have a further downward pressure on the overall value of the sector. The new frontiers for pharmaceuticals are overseas, in places like India and China, and in new "targeted" therapies that promise to be very effective, but for very small numbers of people. The marketing behemouths that the pharmaceutical sector has been are slowly being dismantled over the last decade, leading to a leaner business model, fewer players, but also fewer drugs being discovered.

— cwdonald

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 2:45 PM, 04/04/2013

Do you numnu11ed idiots actually think that these layoffs are a result of legislation not fully implemented? Nevermind. In the case of AZ, the forces causing the layoffs have been years in the making - mostly market forces, and inadequate demand, along with delays in product development. Oh forget it. You are morons the lot of you - Phillies2008, Prof (as ever), Kelprod2. "I suspect that the entire world wide pharmaceutical industry is contracting" I wouldn't necessarily say that. Growth in developing countries has been phenomenal. I wouldn't necessarily say its more than offset the contraction in other parts of the globe.

— Murrayman